Oil buyers in southern Europe are returning to the Russian crude market as a European Union ban on such supplies is still four months away from taking effect.
This is reported by Bloomberg based on monitoring the movement of vessels in the area, as reported by Ukrainian Ukrinform.
“Shipments of Russian crude to ports in Italy and Turkey rose to multi-week highs in the seven days to August 5, offsetting another drop in supplies to customers in northern Europe… Shipments from Russia to the Mediterranean region overall were higher than mid-June,” the report says.
In addition, the first deliveries of crude oil took place for the first time in the last four months in Spain and Greece.
So supplies of Russian oil to European buyers hit a five-week high of 1.38 million barrels a day, although they were still below the 1.85 million barrels a day they had reached before Russia’s attack on Ukraine.
Russia also continues to send about 1.75 million barrels of oil per day to Asia, although those flows have fallen after exporting 2.1 million barrels per day in April and May.
The cargo ships are also said to have worked to hide the origin of the crude oil to allow the permitted cargoes to continue to arrive.
Bloomberg also noted that Russia found a way to hide the origin of the oil to bypass Western restrictions by sending it through an Egyptian port where oil from different origins is mixed.
